On This Day In The Revolution

On this day 250 years ago, hundreds of Patriots marched from Sandwich, Massachusetts to the Barnstable Court House where they met other Patriots from Barnstable County. A total of 1500 people, one tenth of the total population (men, women and children) of the county, there confronted James Otis, Chief Judge of Barnstable County’s Court of…

On this day 250 years ago, the Lexington, Massachusetts Town Meeting voted to form committees “to bring two pieces of cannon from Watertown and mount them, to provide a pair of drums for the use of the military company in town . . . [and] to have the militia and alarm list meet for a…

On this day 250 years ago, Samuel Adams, attending the Continental Congress in Philadelphia wrote to Patriot leader Dr. Joseph Warren in Boston that the Congress had adopted Suffolk Resolves that Warren had written (see my blogs of September 9 & 17). Adams added: They strongly recommend your perseverance in a firm and temperate conduct,…

On this day 250 years ago, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia passed a non-resolution that they “do confine themselves, at present, to the consideration of such rights only as have been infringed by acts of the British parliament since the year 1763, postponing the further consideration of the general state of American rights to a…

On this day 250 years ago in Salisbury, North Carolina, the Rowan County Committee of Safety had its first official meeting under the authority of the Resolution adopted by the North Carolina Provincial Congress on August 25, 1774 that had directed each county to organize a Committee of Safety to enforce the trade embargo with…

On this day 250 years ago, the Continental Congress passed a resolution requesting “the Merchants and Others, in the several Colonies, not to send to Great Britain any Orders for Goods, and to direct the execution of all Orders already sent, to be delayed or suspended, until the sense of the Congress, onthe means to…

On this day 250 years ago, in Alexandria, Virginia, the Fairfax Independent Company of Volunteers was organized at a meeting led by George Mason of the Gentlemen and Freeholders of Fairfax County, Virginia. The meeting adopted a resolution stating In this Time of extreme Danger, with the Indian Enemy in our Country, and threat’ned with…

On September 20, 1774, Harvard Professor John Winthrop wrote to the theologian and intellectual Richard Price, one of America’s firmest supporters in London, that the Massachusetts Government Act “mutilated the Charter [of Massachusetts], so as to leave only a phantom remaining and, by depriving the people of every privilege has erected an absolute despotism.” Her…

On this day 250 years ago, the Sally set sail from Essex County, Virginia with “one thousand and eighty-seven bushels of Indian corn, for the use of our suffering brethren in” Boston. The Essex County Committee led by John Upshaw had arranged for the collection of the corn and the shipment to Massachusetts. Unfortunately inclement…

On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail Adams in Massachusetts about the Continental Congress: The Proceedings of the Congress, are all a profound Secret, as yet, except two Votes which were passed Yesterday, and ordered to be printed. You will see them from every Quarter. These Votes…